CoffeeBean, Hi - happy spring!
You may not have 'lost' any water (but this is dependent upon a couple of things).
You said you lowered the water below the skimmer, did you plug the skimmer? (the return is lower than the skimmer mouth, so it probably was plugged)
Did you have an air pillow or support under the winter cover? Did you manage to keep most of the water off of the cover? Did the pool freeze?
The reason for all the ?s is that if the skimmer wasn't plugged and either you had a bunch of water on the cover, or the pool froze, the wieght of the water or ice (well, not the weight of the ice...) could easily have slowly pushed 1' of water into the skimmer where it just drained out, the loss might not be noticable until either the cover was pumped off or the iceburg in the pool melted.
Another posibility is that the cover has a small hole in it and as you were pumping it off, you were also removing pool water.
On the 'durability' of patches, it's a crap-shoot - some only hold for a few days, others can last 5+ years (in my experience) - the biggest variables are probably how well the patch was applied and whether the surface under it has held up.
I hope that your water exited via an unplugged skimmer! and that your patches are holding fine and you haven't sprung a new leak!!
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